Poor sleeping quality due to frequent erections at night

I just copied this from the sites privacy policy
Information including, but not limited to, email addresses, mailing addresses, telephone numbers, names, websites or links, personal profile settings, signature, posts, surveys, polls, private messages, websites, and research studies will be removed without any prior notice, as defined in our Terms of Use. Eugene

Post the email address and I'll hopefully copy before censors delete.

Have you received anything from 'What We Know'? I sent an email around 15 mins ago.
It's 2am here, so I have to crash in a minute.

PS. It's all so clandestine. You gotta laugh!

Ok, I am in contact directly now with two people! Eugene

My doctor did tell me he would prescribe me baclofen which made me feel relieved. However like I have mentioned before, I use my jock strap from time to time while sleeping either on my sides or my stomach never my back. Sleeping on my back makes the errection always come up. I also sleep in those three positions without a jock strap periodically and I can literally feel the blood rushing out from my penis to restore it back to is normal size from time to time but it no longer wakes me up. My sleeping quality has increased as well. I also increased my baba count by eating two bananas a day,green leaves, nuts, etc. Baba is what baclofen increases, from what I can tell which is what helps decrease the erections. lastly, I use to go to bed dreading my night but now I'm less worried. I still have erections but very rarely in my sleep. And my sex drive is untouched. Hopefully this helps.

I have been in touch with the administers of Steadyhealth.com, specifically the adminstrator with the name "Levar85"

I was told that I can put my email for the questionnaire on this disorder to research purposes. The email address is _[removed]_

So, if you would like to help this research please send me an email and I will send you the questionnaire regarding SRPE. Already severl people have submitted questionnaires. Again, this is to try to gather information on people's experiences with SRPE so we can try to publish the findings and hopefully make urologists and other doctors more aware of the disorder and hopefully lead to new more effective treatment.

Eugene

Thanks Eugene!
Keith

I posted here previously, but have just reread most of the replies/comments and would like to add the following information for those seeking answers to this vexing problem.

I am 67yo (male, obviously) who has had SRPE for about 7 years. I believe it is somehow related to the irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) that I have also suffered from for about 40 years, and, for about 9 years, pain around the perineum post sexual stimulation (with or without orgasm/ejaculation) -- and a tendency toward anxiety.

I HAD been on Amitriptyline about 10 years ago, which helped with IBS symptoms, but which I stopped because I was getting numb thumbs and forearms -- a symptom that went away after I stopped that drug.

I don't recall any other specific events that led to the development of SRPE.

My "research" also led me to trialing baclofen and clonazepam, which I have been taking for about 6 years. I started with 10mg baclofen + 0.25mg clonazepam, but have, over time, increased the baclofen to 15mg (sometimes 17.5mg) and decreased the clonazepam to 0.125mg. Some nights, I manage to sleep right through till about 6am, when the morning wood is so insistent that I have to get up. But most nights, around 4am is when it starts. Other nights, it can be every hour or 90 minutes (whenever I sink into REM). That is, even with a consistent dose of the drugs, I have very variable sleeps. As others have noted, being slightly dehydrated may make it easier to sleep for longer, but I believe there is a cost to that. All in all, I find the level of drugs I am on***just*** takes the edge off the problem enough for me to function adequately -- though possibly not thrive -- with hopefully minimal side effects.

Like most of us, I have pursued every other avenue -- osteopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists, exercise, yoga, shamans (or is it shamen?), homeopaths, "unlearn your pain", all without any particular success. I think they all help, provided I don't obsess about the problem(s).

However, I write this message principally because others have questioned the safety of baclofen and clonazepam, and because other problems have arisen while I have been on this regimen. The first is that, whereas my blood glucose (bg) control (diabetes was not even on my radar) had been excellent some years back, I now find myself with metabolic syndrome or prediabetes (even though I am otherwise extremely fit, healthy, slim, etc., etc.). I believe baclofen can increase (or decrease) one's bg, but I don't know whether such a small dose could have the impact I'm experiencing. I also have very recently found that my (one and only) kidney is struggling to function adequately, with my creatinine values right up (and my estimated GFR way down). Since baclofen is, I believe, a nephrotoxic drug, I obviously worry (again) that even the small dose I am on might be having a very serious negative impact on my health (and I'm also aware, of course, that high bg levels will be very detrimental to my kidney). I don't believe the tiny dose of clonazepam would have these effects, though it -- or the combination -- definitely tends to make me more dopey during the day.

If you are already taking, or are thinking about taking, baclofen, either alone or with clonazepam, please be aware of these possible side effects. I'm not say definitively that they are connected, just that they may be.

I'm interested to know why Will (above) suspects IBS issues as the culprit. I have Crohn's Disease which is a close cousin to IBS, but is caused by an over-active immunes system which kills off good gut bacteria. I wonder if auto-immune issues might be playing a role here? I honestly can't see how, but there must be some unifying feature driving this that we all possess.
Please everyone fill out Eugene's questionnaire!
My handle is usually 'What We Know'.

(20mgs Baclofen and 1 mg of clonazepam before bed).

For me IBS absolutely started around the same time. I had bowel changes right around the same time as issue started. I got a colonscooy and they found I had diverticulosis (not infected) and internal hemmroids (which at this point are chronic). It seems like pelvic tension, stress, injury are all involved in some way. I also had an event prior to this beginning where my penis swelled looked almost like a coke bottle and stayed that way for 3 days. It was painful but resolved on its own. Another thing I suspect could be related was using am incumbent exercise bike as the night before the penis injury happened I had a tingling in perrenium from a long work-out. Is one of the veins now damaged in perenium area that helps resolve erection? I have no issues with erections outside of sleep. In fact, ID argue that my ability to get erections has gone back to when I was in my 20s. I am now 40 and have had the issue 4 years. No meds. Just managing in other ways.

John

I'm not sure I would say IBS is the culprit. Rather, I would say that the two disorders ***may*** have a common cause (namely, nervous tension and a tendency to overfocus on these afflictions). I also note that I may have become predisposed to IBS as a result of numerous and extended courses of antibiotics in my youth. Since the prostate is also impacted by antibiotics and the state of the bowel (and that, contrary to what we'd expect, the prostates of healthy men apparently have a greater bacteria count that those with prostatitis), it makes sense to me that there may be a connection between antibiotic use, IBS and SRPE. Maybe taking probiotics helps restore the microbiome for the gut, but not the prostate, which may require different "bugs"? Just a thought?

John: It's tempting to think there might be something wrong with veins, and I also wondered about that scenario. However, penile+rectal ultrasound indicated that vascularity was (in my case) totally normal (as was everything else, which is both reassuring and also frustrating).

Will,

A very detailed and interesting post, thank you. I have been suffering from SRPE for about 2 years now and have no real stomach issues except a bloated feeling occasionally (maybe a couple of times a week at most).

I have been trying to avoid baclofen up until now in the hope that some kind of miracle therapy, cure or natural remedy would be discovered but I was fast approaching the end of my tether. I was (still am?) contemplating seeing a doctor and asking for baclofen next week.

If I do take it, I was thinking just once every 2-3 days as not to build up too much of a resilience too quickly. But hearing of your potential side effects has somewhat discouraged me.

Thanks,
Rezz

Oops, I seem to have posted a couple of times without logging in.
Rezz, rather than take baclofen every 2 or 3 days, I think you might do better doing what I have done, which is to take as small a dose as possible consistently. The reason I say that is because I've noticed that I function better that way. I've noticed that, if I attempt to drop the dose markedly, even for 1 night, it takes me several nights to restabilize --and, curiously, sometimes it takes an even higher dose to get back on track. For example, if my regular dose is baclofen 15mg per night, and I then miss a night, I would probably have to take 20mg for three or so nights following the night I missed in order to stabilize before very gradually tapering the dose back down to where I was before -- so I end up taking the same amount or more but also have several very uncomfortable nights.

But everyone is different, so by all means see how you go.

I would also be sure to have my BGs and renal function tested regularly while on baclofen (until the miracle therapy, cure or natural remedy appears).

Hope you've completed Eugene's questionnaire.

Be well,

Will

This is Eugene here. I am still collecting the questionnaires at _[removed]_. Again the SteadyHealth sent me a message saying it was ok for me to solicit your answers in order to help us find a solution or some treatment. See my message above regarding the approval.

However, recently I have picked up on a treatment method that someone on this site mentioned. I was very very skeptical at first but I decided to try the athletic supporter (jock strap) idea in trying to be open to solutions to this problem that I have had for about a year. To let you know for the past two to three weeks I have been taking records of my erection events at night. Basically I record the times I wake up and need to walk around or urinate to have the erection go away. While it was three to four times a night almost every night for the past two weeks even taking baclofen, for the past four days or so using the jock strap it has been only one to no events. I even lowered by baclofen from 40 to 30 to 20 to 0 mg.

It is still a new idea I am experimenting with so difficult to tell whether this is a long terms solution, but I will keep trying it.
Basically I use the athletic supporter and please don't laugh stuff two pairs of socks in it to hold my penis tightly against my groin. Thus it compresses it, but no so tightly that it is overy uncomfortable. You may have to, and I am still experimenting with, how to arrange the socks, but it seems to forestall the erection process somehow.

Interestingly, I do sometimes have to get up merely to go to urinate not because of erection. While urinating, I can feel my penis starting to get an erection. Almost as if I had forestalled it and now it starts. Nevertheless, this dissipates shortly and I put the socks back in and go back to sleep. So, far and this is only like four to five days it has made a big difference. And for the last two days I did not take any baclofen, which for me was always only a very partial mitigator of the problem.

Perhaps other people can try this technique and see if it works. The athetic supporter was only like 5 dollars without the cup.
I got the size appropriate for my weight.

Let this forum know your experiences. Again, please contact me for the questionnaire at the address above.